Demons Within
by Harlequin Sequins
Summary: He is a prisoner to his own plots; for the shackles of intellect are much too changeable and great for the mere force of brawn to overpower. Loki-centric; character study.


**Author's Notes: **Don't worry, I'm still working on LOJ, but I just wrote this really quick, a few minutes ago, and wanted to post it. Let me know what you think. :)

**Disclaimer - I don't own the character of Loki.**

* * *

><p>He looks in the mirror, searching for the face.<p>

It's there. It can't hide from him, not for long. He can feel its slithering grace, like snakes hidden within the mind's covert darkness. His eyes line every glint in the mirror, tearing it apart, if only his hands could reach the silver-slick edges and grip them tight. What it could _unleash. _The anger, the vulnerability, the dire wish to destroy anything and everything that looks on him with imagined laughter.

The supple length of a leer brushes against his own lips, kissing him, tasting the metallic blood-redness of his desperation. Death permeates the room. The end of patience, of suffering, of loyalty to all that is good. Loyalty has given him _nothing _in return but lies. _All lies. _When has he ever known the gentleness of truth? The warmth and softly branding mark of eternal love? His father's pride, has it ever been his to shout to the skies of victory? _When? _When shall it be his turn to receive what he has so rightly earned?

His fingers rip at the seams of his hair, as if he is all paper-skin mask, a great ruse, a treacherous body treading upon the fragile shells of a formulated truth. There is no stable foundation on which he may stand to grow, to become the greatness that Thor has aspired to and at last has found.

Stumbled upon, more like it. The great oaf could have done nothing without the tireless steering words of us, _his brother, _breathing into his ear. It is a wonder he has any thoughts of his own that are not born of another's ambitions and wisdom and silent jealousy. _Our _ambitions. _Our _jealousy. There are no thoughts to Thor. Thought is _our _great talent. It is in our every step, our every glance, our every endless waking night.

He tries to hear through the great clamor within him. Thought grows on him, sucking from him his every will to act, a parasite of the body. His own mind preys on him, tells him things he should not hear, not think, that should never exist. He is a prisoner to his own plots; for the shackles of intellect are much too changeable and great for the mere force of brawn to overpower.

_No, no, no! _He shouts into the echoing gloom of his own head, shields of hands to his face. _Hide me from this world, this demon, oh loyal flesh. Heed no presence of mind. _

Oh, but you cannot escape me.

However can you escape your own self?

He lifts himself from the chair, fastening his hands like restraints, keeping his every blood-fueled will to peel himself apart. Around the room, he glides as if on the wings of grace, not a sound, not a breath, not another aching word to burn him into the awareness of the room. It is as if a ghost paces the golden floor. No one, not even the world itself, takes note of his being.

You are insignificant. You are but a trace of filth upon the glory of your brother, the wisdom of your father and the boundless love of your mother. You are but a howling whelp of a boy. But with me, if you should embrace me, why – there is no knowing the expanse of your potential. Not even I could map out the conquest of your future greatness for you. Thor shall be but a page in the scrolls of history. But you, Loki. They shall build libraries to hold the history of your conquest of these nine realms. There shall be no limit to what you shall conceive. There will be no name to describe the vastness of your splendor, your unimaginable fame.

Outside of the silver whisper in his head, he can hear his own teeth chatter, his own lips smack wetly against each other, seeking to escape the monster behind its own face. His feet quicken, his grace slipping, and he falls. His knees, they buckle, overwhelmed by the growth of the ghost within. His body cries out. _No more, please. I beg of you._

_Beg_ of me. Ha. You beg of yourself.

"Please," he cries aloud, eyes flashing sickly, skin curling in on itself in a frozen pallor. "Please, anyone. Aid! I need aid! _Please._"

Your weakness is riveting. Why, they all war amongst themselves to win the great honor of saving you.

Inside, he is a hall of laughter; it's rising and falling like the tides of the shores and chilling the very blood crawling through his veins. The bones of his structure begin to tremble on their foundations, loosened soil of his soul overturned as the graves of his regrets begin to wake from eternal death. Spirits arrive from the shaken core of him. Anger, jealousy, desperation, loneliness. He's bloated with all of them, swollen with the rot of his being, and he cannot escape himself. He reaches out for a savior, his pale hand struggling to find a way through the undulating bog. _Please. _Slowly, so slowly he falls more. Falling, faster, faster.

Yes, yes all of us, we are here with you now.

Everything you've ever felt, ever tried to forget, we are here.

You can't escape us.

For we are but pieces of your own self.

He looks up into the mirror once more, fighting for purchase on the physical world around him. It rises up like a glass lake of bare truth before the guarded innocence in his eyes.

And when he looks upon his face, shaking hands marring the reflective pale light of his countenance.

He sees through the flesh-bone cage that he is laughter; he is _alive_.


End file.
